


all at sea

by Sixthlight



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Take Your Fandom to Work Day, contains the other kind of ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 11:16:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10216778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: Captain Nightingale wants the dinner he missed, Dr Brook wants to throw a geochemist overboard on behalf of her ROV team, and Dr Grant might be regretting this whole chief scientist thing. (Not really.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> The kind of fic that happens when I spend a month at sea with very little internet. Reposting from Tumblr as part of my continuing effort to get all my fic in one place.

It was ten-thirty before I made it to the mess, long past the half-hour dinner service, and I’d forgotten to ask the stewards to put a plate aside for me. That was okay; the leftovers of dinner were in the mess fridge, some sort of roast red meat and starch-heavy vegetables. Two weeks into a three-week cruise, the galley wasn’t overflowing with fresh produce. Instead I rummaged around and managed to put together a sandwich that was idiosyncratic but appetizing, at least to me.

This long into second shift, there was only one other person in the mess; he clearly had remembered to ask for a plate. On the other hand, he was the captain, so probably he hadn’t even had to ask.

“Alright if I sit here?” I asked.

“Certainly,” said Captain Nightingale. I had wondered when we’d started mobilization what him and his cut-glass RP accent were doing captaining a scientific research vessel, but then you could probably ask the same question about me and my London council estate accent and the chief scientist’s cabin, so I didn’t bother wondering a lot. “Late-night snack?”

“Missed dinner, forgot to ask for a plate,” I said, sitting down. “Since we’re short on dive time after the winch issues last week there’s still some, uh, robust scientific debate about priorities for the night dive.”

“Any chance it will involve moving station?” was his immediate question, since getting the ship where it needed to be, and keeping it there, was his responsibility.

I shook my head, swallowing. “No. This was just about whose equipment goes on when; the target area is still the same. The geochemistry team wants more majors, the geophysicists are trying to install…wait, you probably don’t care.”

“It’s less a question of not caring and more about not necessarily understanding,” he said easily, with a smile to take any sting away. “This is my first voyage doing deep-sea work; I’m familiar with CTD casts, but the ROV equipment is all new to me, though not most of the crew.”

“You’re probably wondering why it breaks so often.”

“That seems to be par for the course with scientific equipment, actually.”

“Weirdly enough, submerging delicate electronics under two kilometers of seawater tends to lead to malfunctions,” I said. “Who would have guessed?”

Nightingale opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by Beverley Brook, the ROV team head, sliding into the third of the four chairs at the table. She was clutching a mug of coffee like a lifeline and it wasn’t even two am yet. “Hey, Peter. If I throw one of your people off the side, how annoyed are you going to be?”

“Depends,” I said. “If you start with a student nobody might notice until we get back to port.”

Beverley sighed. We’d worked together before. “No, it’s Lesley and Sahra and their Mexican standoff over the equipment. I don’t _care_ , I just don’t want them still arguing in front of the ROV while we’re trying to get it set up. Use your chief scientist powers to make them stop.”

“I’m going to have to veto throwing anybody overboard,” I said. “We do kind of need both of them. But if you want a order of priorities, Lesley can go first. Sahra’s been out here before, we need her more for navigation. And you know as well as I do my chief scientist powers are largely theoretical.”

“Surely you know where all the target sites are already?” asked Nightingale, who apparently hadn’t been paying attention for the last two weeks at _all_ , or at least not to the vagaries of the ROV team’s issues.  

“Okay, so imagine,” Beverley said before I could open my mouth, “that you’re in a football stadium, and it’s pitch-dark, and you’ve got a Mini with headlights on, and the field is strewn with big lumps, and you’re looking for one particular lump. How long does it take you to find it?”

“Except the area’s a lot bigger than a football stadium,” I said.

“And the Mini goes about ten meters a minute, top speed, and it’s on the end of a rope and you can’t let the rope break,” said Beverley.

I picked up. “And you have one person who’s been in the Mini when it was being driven around the football stadium before. How much do you want to keep them?”

“I take your point,” said Nightingale. Beverley stole a piece of roast potato off his plate while he was looking thoughtful.

“Excuse me?”

“Keeping my energy up.” Beverley smiled benignly at him. He just shook his head, but his lips twitched.

“Hey, here’s an idea,” I said. “Why don’t we just have the eight am meeting now? We’re all here. Then we can sleep in. I bet the weather forecast’s not going to change that much in the next eight hours.”

“Do you ever _stop_?” Beverley asked.

“No,” I said. “Job description.” I took a mouthful of her coffee when she let go of it for a second. “Hey!”

“Keeping my energy up,” I said, and returned her innocent smile.

“Hold on,” she said to Nightingale. “Why are _you_ eating dinner by yourself this late? You’ve been on the day shift.”

“Long story,” said Nightingale.

“Is the ship broken?”

“The ship is not broken,” he said. “In any way that’s going to impact the science programme.”

“Oh, good,” said Beverley.

“I’m so glad we have these detailed exchanges of mission-critical information,” I said.

“I was thinking, though,” he went on, putting his cutlery down. “If you _do_ decide to toss anybody overboard, let me know; we could always do with a man overboard drill.”

Beverley blinked at him slowly for a few seconds, her perception dulled by the hour and the fact she’d been working on and off since four am _yesterday_ morning. I hid a grin in my sandwich.

“And maybe do it doing daylight,” he added, face perfectly straight. "For health and safety reasons."

Beverley grinned, finally. “Noted.”

“For the love of God,” I said. “Do not throw any of my scientists overboard, drill or no drill. Imagine how that’s going to look in the cruise report. I’d never get funding again.”

“You’d get forgiven. There’s always more scientists than funding anyway,” said Beverley with a shrug. “Good ROV techs, now they’re hard to find.”

I sighed. Beverley patted me on the shoulder.

“Out of curiosity,” asked Nightingale, “how often have you two worked together?”

“Too often,” I said.

“Apparently so.” He stood, and picked up his plate. “Have a good night, Dr Grant, Dr Brook. Do remember what I said about daylight.”

“Uh,” said Beverley as he walked away. “He knows I was joking?”

“If you can’t spot that there goes someone who deeply enjoys fucking with people in plausibly deniable ways,” I said, “I don’t know what to do with you.”

“Takes one to know one,” said Beverley, and drained her coffee while I rolled my eyes at her. “Ugh, okay. We’re on deck in half an hour. I have to go supervise the reconfig. Bed for you?”

“Staying up until I’m sure we’re on the seafloor again and everybody’s happy with the equipment list – or at least not so unhappy I’ll be hearing about it until we dock - and then Jaget’s got the graveyard shift in the van so he can supervise the fluid sampling.”

“Cheer up,” she said. “We’re two weeks in, we’re going to get at least three-quarters of the planned work done, and the forecast is clear.”

“I know. Just trying to keep on top of things.”

She patted me on the shoulder again as she stood. “You’re doing good. Don’t break down on me now.”

Coming from Bev, that actually meant a lot. This was my first time out as chief scientist – a job which is less about providing scientific leadership and more like a refined version of cat-herding – and it really needed to go well. But with people like her and Captain Nightingale around, it was a lot easier.

Admittedly, Lesley’s tech Zach, who’d taken against Beverley from the start, did fall overboard later that week. But we were back in port and demobilizing by then, so it could have been an accident. And it was from the main deck, which isn’t more than two meters above the waterline. And anyway he can swim.

And if anybody asks, I did not see Beverley and Captain Nightingale fistbump once Frank the safety officer had him back on board.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] All At Sea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15492252) by [Annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annapods)




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